A new assessment of the health of Alaskans was released in July. It comes with a book of health indicators and an indicator scorecard. The assessment took two years to create and involved the help of representatives from agencies, organizations and communities from around the state.
The 2020 Health Assessment brings information on population characteristic, social and economic factors together to create an in depth look at the health struggles the state of Alaska is facing. Co-coordinator of Healthy Alaskans 2020 Lisa Aquino is the community health improvement manager for the Alaska Division of Public health. She says 2020 is a statewide partnership.
“This collaborative initiative. At the start of it it’s the state of Alaska Department of Health and Social Services and the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium. And these organizations came together to build a larger initiative and brought together a lot of other partners, organizations, agencies from throughout the state to work in a coordinated effort to identify 25 health goals for the decade that we will prioritize and then to create an action plan to align our work and reach those goals.”
The list includes nationally important health concerns that may seem obvious such as cancer, obesity, smoking and mental health. However, there are some issues on the list that may not affect everyone. Aquino says the idea was to think of all the events that affect health.
“An issue like rape or intimate partner violence, those are both issues where the rapes in Alaska are high compared to the US. And that’s an important consideration in considering whether something would be one of our 25 leading health goals for this decade. We also took into consideration the kinds of evidence based approaches that existed to actually impact this problem. Can we get any traction on this?”
Aquino says it’s important to remember that the population in every community is different. The assessment just shows the 25 most important and prevalent health related issues-- it’s up to communities to prioritize and manage them.
She says the state is now looking at the different actions it can take to be successful in reaching the goals set. However, Aquino believe that the responsibility to fight these health concerns still falls on individuals.
“As individuals, as Alaskans, I hope we can also use the information in this report. Because it’s about the population as a whole. But I think there are a lot of really useful things that we can take away as individuals in the decisions that we make every day about our own health.”
For a copy of the Healthy Alaskans 2020 assessment and a list of the 25 health concerns, visit the website of the Department of Health and Social Services at www.dhss.alaska.gov.